ke it more difficult to escape if he knew
too much in advance. He told her about the laugh, and the gravestones,
and the faces at the other window, but she would not tell him what he
wanted to know, and at last he gave up asking. A very deep impression
had been made on his mind, however, and he began to realise, more than
he had hitherto done, the horror of his prison and the power of his
dreadful keeper.

But when he began to look about him again, he noticed that there was a
new thing in the room. The governess had left him, and was bending over
it. She was doing something very busily indeed. He asked her what it
was.

"I'm making your bed," she said.

It was, indeed, a bed, and he felt as he looked at it that there was
something very familiar and friendly about the yellow framework and the
little brass knobs.

"I brought it up just now," she explained. "But it's not for sleeping
in. It's only for you to lie down on, and also partly to deceive Him."

"Why not for sleeping?"

"There's no sleeping at all here," she went on calmly.

"Why not?"

"You can't sleep out of your body," she laughed.

"Why not?" he asked again.

"Your body goes to sleep, but _you_ don't," she explained.

"Oh, I see." His head was whirling. "And my body--my real body----"

"Is lying asleep--unconscious they call it--in the night-nursery at
home. It's sound asleep. That's why you're here. It can't wake up till
you go back to it, and you can't go back to it till you escape--even if
it's ready for you before then. The bed is only for you to rest on, for
you can _rest_ though you can't _sleep_."

Jimbo stared blankly at the governess for some minutes. He was debating
something in his mind, something very important, and just then it was
his Older Self, and not the child, that was uppermost. Apparently it was
soon decided, for he walked sedately up to her and said very gravely,
with her serious eyes fixed on his face, "Miss Lake, are you _really_
Miss Lake?"

"Of course I am."

"You're not a trick of His, like the voices, I mean?"

"No, Jimbo, I am really Miss Lake, the discharged governess who
frightened you." There was profound anxiety in every word.

Jimbo waited a minute, still looking steadily into her eyes. Then he put
out his hand cautiously and touched her. He rose a little on tiptoe to
be on a level with her face, taking a fold of her cloak in each hand.
The soul-knowledge was in his eyes just then, not the mere curiosity